Finland Spending 15,000 Euros a Year Per Asylum Seeker

Earlier this week, the Migration Service of Finland said that all the reception centers in the country were overcrowded, and the authorities were urgently looking for new places to host migrants.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Over 15,000 refugees have arrived in Finland in 2015, local media reported Saturday, citing the country’s migration service.

“During this year, more than 15,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Finland. If you look at the number of arrivals in recent days, it appears that 600 people arrive every day,” Juha Simila, spokesman of the migration service, said, as cited by the Yle news portal.

According to Simila, Finland spends around 15,000 euros a year per asylum seeker living in a refugee reception center. The amount also includes wages of the center employees, the media reported.

Earlier this month, Finland agreed to take in 2,400 asylum seekers as part of the European Commission’s initiative to relocate 120,000 refugees from southern EU member states.

According to Prime Minister Juha Sipila, Finland is likely to resettle asylum seekers to other countries of the European Union if the bloc creates a permanent and binding mechanism of redistribution of refugees.